"How long has he been ill?"
"Four hours. Never being sick like this. Not him. Not me."
"Four hours. That's strange. Why should he become ill when the Mirador began to burn?"
I said, "I, urn."
Mr. von Heber, the Kalliphorne, and the Kalliphorne's husband all looked at me.
"Yes?" said Mr. von Heber.
"The Mirador got warding spells. I mean, like, spells to kill you if you get where you shouldn't."
"Indeed," said Mr. von Heber. "You think those might have something to do with this?"
"Dunno. I ain't no hocus. But, I mean, we know
something's
gone wrong with the Mirador's spells."
"And the timing is uncomfortably precise. I will keep your hypothesis in mind." Zephyr'd liked the word "hypothesis." I remembered him saying "Fancy word for 'idea,'" and grinning like the Man in the Moon. Mr. von Heber shifted around so he was sort of propped up with the quilts and where he could get a good grip on the Kalliphorne's husband's hands. "This may take some time. You will not disturb me if you wish to talk, but I must ask you to move as little as possible. Oh, and Bernard!"
"Yeah?"
"Put out the light. We haven't another, and I don't trust my witchlights tonight."
"All right," Bernard said, like he wasn't sure it was. But he did what Mr. von Heber said to.
It got really dark. I mean, sure, dark is dark, but there's times, like when you're in your own room and you know where everything is, where it don't seem as dark as all that. And then there's times where it's like the dark is breathing down the back of your neck and wrapping itself around you, and you can feel it deciding whether it should eat you starting With the feet or with the head. This was that kind of dark. I was sitting next to the Kalliphorne, both of us next to her husband, and I could smell them, and after a while I could hear her husband breathing, too hard and too fast.
I'm sure she could hear it, too, and maybe it was to get away from that noise that she said, "Young foxlike one?"
"Yes, lady?"
She made her laughing noise and said, "The Fat One hating you very much?"
"Yeah."
"Why this being? He shouting down, telling me about you. Not doing this before. Not telling single prey."
Prey, I thought, and swallowed hard. She'd probably eat me if Mr. von Heber couldn't cure her husband. She might eat me if I didn't answer her question, just for crossing her. But given a choice between her and Phoskis, I'd pick her seven times in a septad. I told her the story.
It started with Lord Stephen's cousin Cornell, who might or might not have had a claim to the Protectorate. Big ugly catfight in the Mirador. Didn't seem like nothing on earth was going to make Lord Cornell Teverius shut up, and what happened in 20.1.7 was somebody decided to find something that would. It was a plot, a big one, and there were people in on it from the Mirador as well as from the Lower City. I don't know how Keeper got connected with those people. If I'd asked, she would've laughed at me and told me to leave the thinking to those that could. And back then, I didn't want to know things like that about Keeper. I was happy to have her doing my thinking for me.
The part I knew about was Phoskis. Keeper got me into St. Kirban's, telling Phoskis I'd "lost my edge" and she wanted me settled with some safe job. It wasn't no secret that Keeper was sleeping with me. So what neither of them said, but they both knew they were talking about, was that I'd be standing surety for Keeper's good behavior, just like going to get a kid out of the Kennel, only the other way round. Phoskis had been leaning on Keeper for months, and this had been made up careful to look like the offer of a truce. And Phoskis took the bait.
I moved into St. Kirban's the next decad. Learned the routine. Hated Phoskis. And hated him more with every passing day. I started praying to Kethe, daily, that this wouldn't last much longer, that I could just kill this guy like Keeper wanted and go home.
It took months, though. It wasn't until a night in the middle of Floréal Lord Cornell showed up, started banging on St. Kirban's doors like he was s set to break them down with his bare hands. Phoskis grunted at me to stop standing around like a fuckwit and open the damn door.
There were two of them outside, a flashie in a panic and a dark guy in livery with one of them smooth faces that don't change whether they've got love or murder going on behind them. The guy in livery gave me the tiniest flicker of a wink, and the flashie panted, "Is this St. Kirban's?"
I stepped aside and let them in.
It didn't take long. Phoskis took his money and waddled away. I took them down to the river, dragged in a boat for them, grabbed Lord Cornell by the hair just as he was off-balance between the boat and the dock and cut his throat. I gave the body a shove, and it tumbled across the boat's middle seat.
Me and the guy in livery looked at each other a second, and he said "That went about as well as could be expected. You know the rest?"
"Yeah. You just be sure you say it was a guy in a black boat that ambushed you, and it'll be okay. Phoskis is the only one uses black boats."
"How many of them does he have?"
"Used to have six. It'll be five in a minute."
"Good. I can manage the rest. Lord Cornell Teverius is dead, and everyone will know Phoskis Terrapin had a hand in it."
"That's the plan," I said.
He rowed off. I took one of the boats out a ways, sank it, and swam back. I'd probably have gone a lot faster if I'd known the Kalliphorne didn't give a rat's ass about Phoskis's portcullis.
Cleaned up, tidied away the evidence, and settled in to wait. For preference, I'd've been out the door and halfway to Britomart already, but Keeper'd said no. Wait, she said. Don't let him think it was you. Wait and pick a fight. Let
him
throw you out. And I was still an indiction and a halt away from learning not to jump when Keeper said frog.
The news of the murder got to us the next day. The cade-skiffs had found the body, and the boat, and
the guy in livery, who was half out or his head with grief and shock—and some damn good acting—and swearing revenge on the man who'd murdered his master, and on the fat bastard who'd led him into the trap. Even the goon who brought the news thought Phoskis had been bought—I could see it in the way he was standing and the shifty look in his eyes. All at once, I saw how I could confuse things even more, and I made like I believed it, too.
Of course Phoskis suspected me, but he saw the way I was watch him, and he thought I was stupid, so I don't think it crossed his mind that I might be acting. Leastways, when the Dogs came calling, he let me hide in the back and didn't say nothing. Of course, he was also lying his face black about not ever having seen Lord Cornell Teverius and most particularly not on the night in question, and he didn't know nothing about boats or rivers or nothing of the sort, officers, so you can see where it might have been kind of hard for him to say he thought he knew who'd done it.
We stared at each other sidelong for two decads, while the Dogs sniffed around the Lower City in this hopeless kind of way—they knew they weren't going to find nothing, but they couldn't say so—and the Mirador made these big speeches about what they were going to do to the murderer when they got their hands on him. Sounded good and didn't hurt nobody. And then finally Keeper sent word that I could come home again. She'd been paid, and half the Lower City believed Phoskis Terrapin had let himself be bought by the Mirador, and just that morning some poor scullery maid in Tamerlane had fallen over a headless body in her employers' areaway, and her employers were the daughter of a cadet branch of the Vesperii and the second son of the President of the Dyers' Guild, so the Dogs had a new flea in their ear. The truth would get out eventually—secrets don't keep in the Lower City—and Phoskis would hate me twice as much, but right then I was so glad I could've sung.
Picking a fight with Phoskis was the easiest part of the whole fucking job. Took about five minutes to get him mad enough to throw me out. And because it was a real fight—between him and me, I mean, and not just a proxy thing for him and Keeper like it was supposed to be—I dragged his poor little whore with me when I went. He was too scared of me to try and stop me, and it hurt him right in his vanity, the way nothing else I could have done would have touched him. Keeper was mad enough to spit nails, but I didn't back down—I think it was the only time I ever got my own Way against Keeper, and she fucking well made me pay for it—and in the end she got the girl a job as a 'tween maid in a flash house in Lighthill. A cadet branch of the Gardenii, I think, but I ain't rightly sure no more. Far as I know, she's still there, and that's the one good thing that came out of the whole stupid mess.
Felix
The Hall of the Chimeras. I don't know how I got here. I don't know why my hands hurt.
There are monsters holding me, green and sharp and cloudy and thorny black. "You traitor," says one in Thaddeus's voice, and his hatred washes over me, red and staining.
"Then it wasn't just a dream," I say hopelessly.
"A dream! The Mirador is burning! How in the seven names of God did you do it?"
"I didn't. It was Malkar. He tricked me."
"Malkar! Is that your answer to everything?
Oh, it wasn't me, it was Malkar
."
His mockery hurts; I say, "But it
was
Malkar. Thaddeus, you don't think I'd do this, do you? Really?" I know there is something I can say something that will make him believe me, but I don't know what it is.
"I don't know what to think any longer. I don't understand you."
"But, Thaddeus—"
The other monster, the green one, says, "I thought you told me the Curia had him under interdict."
Gideon's voice, the blessed voice of reason—the thing I hadn't been able to think of.
Thaddeus curses in Midlander. "Malkar?" he says to me, but his tone has changed. "Really?"
"I swear," I say, and make some foolish, unguarded movement with my hands. The pain—the fingers on both hands, crushed by Malkar's grip—makes my vision go black; through it, I hear them both cursing, Thaddeus's Midlander oaths of his strange, unnameable god, Gideon cursing in Kekropian, which I don't understand.
"Did Malkar do this?" Thaddeus says. "My God, Felix, I'm sorry. I had no idea—"
"I have never been trustworthy," I say, my own voice distant and dreamy in my ears; the darkness is thickening, swirling around me like cream stirred into tea.
It is too heavy for me. I sink under it and hear nothing more.
Mildmay
After I finished my damn bedtime story, everybody was quiet for a while I'd almost forgotten about Bernard and Mr. von Heber—I get like that when I'm telling stories, and the dark made it easier—and I wondered what they thought. I'd just proved Bernard right about me five times over, and he was probably thinking now that if he hit me quick and dumped me in the river, it'd be too late for Mr. von Heber to complain.
But before anybody came up with anything polite to say—and before I got too nervous and said something myself—Mr. von Heber's breath hissed in, and the Kalliphorne's husband let out a terrible screech, and be. I even thought about it, I'd thrown myself forward to try and pin him down.
The next five minutes, minute for minute, were about the nastiest five minutes I'd ever spent. It was pitch-black, and the Kalliphorne's husband, sick or not, was strong as a fucking ox, and I was scared to death I was going to hurt him
and
that he was going to knock me flying
and
that one or the other of us was going to hurt Mr. von Heber. And the Kalliphorne's husband was still making that terrible noise, and I could hear Mr. von Heber cursing, and he was shouting, "Mildmay, I've got to get his hands! His
hands
!" And I was thinking, Well, fine, just as soon as you can tell me where the fuck they are. And then the tail whacked me upside the head, and I was seeing great blue and purple and red stars, but at the same time I'd got myself oriented as to where I was and where that fucking tail was, and where that meant the rest of
him
was.
And then I'd got him pinned down okay, although he was bucking underneath me in a way that meant it wouldn't be for long, and I said, "Quick, grab his hands if you want 'em!"
I felt what happened next, just through the monster's body. Even though we didn't move, it felt like we dropped about a septad-inch, slam onto the floor.
"There," said Mr. von Heber, and he sounded dog-tired.
"Can I let go now?" I said, and realized the monster wasn't screaming no more.
Right next to my ear, somebody said something in the teakettle language. The Kalliphorne said, "He saying, you moving please. Not comfortable."
"Oh, powers, I'm sorry," I said and got off him—and fell straight over Mr. von Heber.
He yelped, and I said, "FUCK!" because I should've known he was there before I moved, and he said, "Bernard, where the hell is the light?"
"Oh, do you want it now?" Bernard said, all snarky. "I dropped the damn lucifers when you started your hullabaloo, if you want to know, so you're going to have to give me a second."
"Fine," said Mr. von Heber. "Madame, will you ask your husband please if he is feeling better?"
A long bout of teakettles while I picked myself up and moved a little farther away, where I wasn't going to go falling over people without no warning. Then the Kalliphorne said, "He saying, cramps being gone. Fever being gone. Feeling not so sick."
"Excellent," said Mr. von Heber, and Bernard finally lit the fucking lantern.
The Kalliphorne and her husband were holding hands like any courting couple, and you could see they were happy, even if it didn't show up on their faces. Mr. von Heber was looking about as tired as he sounded. I looked at myself. My hands were bleeding from where I'd grabbed hold of the wrong part of the tail. I checked the side of my head. A little blood there, too, nothing too bad.